As one-quarter of the Imagination Movers, Rich Collins entertains large numbers of children around the world.

He does the same thing at home: He and his wife, Becky, are the parents of five kids, ranging in age from 2 to 11.

For several months a year, Rich logs 12-hour days shooting the self-titled "Imagination Movers" TV show on an Elmwood sound stage. Season three premieres Feb. 14 on the Disney Channel.

The Movers also spend weeks at a time on tour. After a hometown concert at the UNO Lakefront Arena today, they'll perform in 55 cities across the United States and Canada through May.

While Rich is on the road, Becky manages the household, shuttling kids to school, lessons and appointments.

That task was made easier after the family moved from an overcrowded, 1,800-square-foot cottage in Lakeview to a 4,400-square-foot, two-story Uptown double.

They converted the rambling structure into a single-family dwelling that feels like a bed-and-breakfast for children.

"The house is a tool to help Becky survive while I'm away playing shows and having fun," Rich said.

When the Movers go on tour, "we leave behind people that have to work a lot harder."

The breached levees of Hurricane Katrina flooded the Collinses' Lakeview home. After a nightmarish renovation marked by shoddy workmanship and misappropriated money, they finally returned to Lakeview.

But with the 2008 arrival of Hank, their youngest child, they officially ran out of room. They put the Lakeview house on the market.

When it finally sold in the spring of 2009, they still hadn't found a new house. So the family of seven descended on Becky's mother's Uptown home off St. Charles Avenue.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz / The Times-PicayuneThe enlarged and updated kitchen now serves as a room large enough for the entire family to socialize.

Weeks later, a for-sale sign appeared on the house next door. Dating to around 1905, the house boasted six bedrooms, six bathrooms, eight fireplace mantels, six staircases, architectural details and tall ceilings: 10 feet downstairs, 12 feet upstairs.

However, extensive renovations were required. After their bad experience in Lakeview, the Collinses were loath to undertake another major project.

But the house was close to the kids' school. Living next door to her mother would help Becky while Rich was away. And nearby single-family homes were more expensive per square foot.

The big double started "looking better and better," Becky said.

They closed on it in August 2009, and moved in.

Kitchen convergence

With their limited budget, the couple were unsure where to start renovations. Rich hails from a long line of architects, but did not inherit the design gene.

Friends suggested they enlist Calvin M. Johnson III. Johnson graduated from Tulane University with a master's degree in architecture. After Katrina, he applied for a residential contractor's license and shifted his focus to design-build work, specializing in historic properties.

Johnson recommended they focus on one space. The house lacked a room large enough for the entire family to socialize. They decided to create a kitchen for that purpose.

"The kitchen needed to not only connect both sides, but bleed across," Johnson said. "I wanted to completely remove the center wall."

To make up for lost structural support, he installed a 16-inch beam. He camouflaged the beam with an 18-inch soffit dressed up with four recessed lights.

That soffit informed the entire kitchen. Its depth corresponded with the tops of the new, contemporary-style custom cabinets. A matching soffit was added above the range-top island.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz / The Times-PicayuneCubbies under the stairway help keep chaos to a minimum.

"It was an architectural language that tied everything together, but also concealed that it was ever a divided space," Johnson said. "It looks like it's always been that way."

Seating arrangement

Initial plans, inspired by the Camellia Grill, called for parallel peninsulas to extend from both sides of the sink. As construction progressed, they swapped out one peninsula for an island, to improve flow.

"It creates a focal point for cooking and cleaning," Johnson said. "The kids sit around the perimeter as the parents do what they need to do, and keep an eye on them."

The family tends to gather at the dining room table for supper, but eats breakfast and lunch more informally. The island seats two; the peninsula's perimeter accommodates five. Rich and Becky usually occupy the island, as the kids array themselves along the peninsula.

"It's like there's a moat between us," Rich said. "They don't ask us for as much. That's their little world."

Speakers set into the ceiling are wired to a Sonos sound system, which streams music from online radio stations and digital computer files. Rich controls the system from his iPhone.

A previous owner had overlaid the original pine floors on the double's western side with oak flooring. To match the two sides of the new kitchen, the Collinses reluctantly tore out the oak. A staircase was removed to create a walk-in pantry.

View full sizeEliot kamenitz / The Times-PicayuneThe play and toy room is one of seven 'play zones' in the house. The distractions keep kids busy while adults socialize.

Becky loves to cook, and the family often entertains.

"Like a lot of New Orleanians, Becky handles big moments through food," Rich said. "The way the family works is based on meals."

Thus, the new kitchen is the household's hub. "We can do everything in there," Becky said. "It's very easy to work in that kitchen."

Room to roam

The entire house speaks to an abundance of children. Rex, 11, Abby, 10, Luke, 8, Sophie, 4, and Hank, 2, have plenty of room to roam.

"It's sort of like a house, sort of like a preschool," observed a family friend.

"People like coming to our house," Becky said, as kids tend to disappear and amuse themselves.

The music room's centerpiece is the baby grand piano on which Becky took lessons as a child. The kids also jam with Dad on assorted guitars and drums.

Rex's room is decorated with odes to AC/DC, the Police, Queen, the Beatles, Van Halen -- and Drew Brees.

Beneath a staircase arrayed with dozens of snapshots are cubbies for coats.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz / The Times-PicayuneA banner made by the five children for their father, Rich Collins, who tours with Imagination Movers, hangs in the upper hallway.

Becky organized several checklists and systems to manage the household alone. Board games must be signed out of the storage closet. All but the youngest are assigned chores and rooms to clean.

" 'Clean' is a relative term," Rich said. "Perfection is fragile."

Becky keeps the kids on schedule. That schedule is less strict when Dad is home.

"There are two ways of life," Rich said. "When I'm home, we hang out and have fun. When I leave, it's more militant: '4:17 p.m. is not trampoline time.' I'm not sure I help by being here."

Whimsy informs the large work-in-progress.

Each child painted a tile on a fireplace mantel. Props from the "Imagination Movers" show decorate the air-hockey room.

Rich spray-painted a brass chandelier in the dining room a rust color, then strung it with Mardi Gras beads. A "welcome home" banner his kids fashioned from a sheet after the last Movers tour hangs in an upstairs hallway.

"We've got a lot of wall space," Rich said.

Delicate balance

Johnson prefers to preserve as much original architecture as possible. A fireplace mantel on the eastern side of the new kitchen was removed to make way for custom cabinets. But the matching mantel in the adjacent dining room remained.

"Working on old houses, there's a delicate balance of wanting to be contemporary where it's warranted, but also respecting the historic character of what's given to you," he said.

"There has to be a good reason to take something out.

"The trick is how the old and the new play off each other, how they complement or contrast each other in a nice way."

The family remained in the house as the new kitchen was built behind floor-to-ceiling plastic sheets. Johnson and his crew "basically lived with us for a couple of seasons," Rich said.

"They were here all the time, every day. We're better friends than when we started, which is a good sign."

The additional inhabitants blended into the mix.

"With five kids, there is already a level of chaos in their lives," Johnson said. "A little more with a construction project didn't seem to matter."